Troubleshooting Side Effects of a New Diet: Low Blood Sugar

For those who are not used to eating a low-carb diet consisting of 50 or fewer grams of carbs a day, you may occasionally experience hypoglycemia, or known as low blood sugar. Whenever this happens, it may be a little bit alarming if you haven’t experienced these low blood sugar symptoms in the past:

The first step to dealing with low blood sugar is to recognize the symptoms of hypoglycemia (low sugar):

Symptoms of Low Blood Sugar

Sweatiness

Clammy Skin

Nausea (sick to your stomach)

Shaking, jittery, or nervous

Unsteady, difficult to walk

Feeling “off”, but not a cold

Heart may beat fast

Feel like you are going to “pass out”

Feeling “sick in your stomach”

Remember that phentermine and/or HCG work very well to suppress your appetite, so if you’re used to eating every 4 hours, and suddenly you take phentermine and don’t eat for 8 hours stretches, you may be more susceptible to some unwanted side effects like feeling jittery, nauseated, or get sweaty since your body isn’t accustomed to fasting for longer than a certain amount of time.

However, if you’re used to regularly going 6-8 hours without eating a meal, you may not get these symptoms at all because you have trained your body to even out blood sugar spikes and falls over long stretches, that means you are quite the expert at regulating your own blood sugar level and won’t have any side effects.

What do you do when you think your blood sugar is running low?

Quick Treatment of Low Blood Sugar

A cookie

A handful of candy

A small cup of juice

A few big gulp of regular soda

Pictured here is MaiLan helping us get our blood sugar levels back up. No, not really, all that candy is for her.

Basically, eat anything with sugar to quickly get rid of your hypoglycemia. The recommend intake is 20-40 grams of simple carbohydrate. The fastest acting simple carbohydrates are sweet drinks, like lemonade or juices with sugar added, or even regular soda. Other options are just anything you can quickly grab in the pantry, such as crackers, candy, or a cookie. Often, sugary beverages or snacks will take roughly 15 minutes to work to correct your blood sugar issue.

Having low blood sugar is quite an annoyance, but at least it’s a decently fun problem to fix. Remember to recognize early symptoms of hypoglycemia, such as feeling jittery, shaky, nauseated, or sweaty, and consume a small bit of sweet food/beverages to rapidly bring your sugar level to normal.